- 1432 Renaissance masterpiece, The Ghent Altarpiece by Hubert and Jan van Eyck, is consecrated at St Bavo's Cathedral, Belgium, commissioned by wealthy merchants
First Steel Plough
1837 US blacksmith John Deere creates the first commercially successful self-scouring steel plow in Grand Detour, Illinois
1840 The world's first adhesive postage stamp, the Penny Black, is first used in Great Britain
- 1851 American physician and inventor John Gorrie patents a "refrigeration machine" to make ice
1889 Exposition Universelle (World's Fair) in Paris opens with the recently completed Eiffel Tower serving as the entrance arch; the elevators in the tower are not yet ready, so intrepid visitors have to climb 1,710 steps to reach the top
First Sub-Four-Minute Mile
1954 English athlete Roger Bannister becomes the first to run a sub-4-minute mile, recording 3:59.4 at Iffley Road Track in Oxford
- 1970 Yuichiro Miura of Japan skis down Mount Everest
- 1974 Scotland Yard recovers the stolen Johannes Vermeer oil painting "The Guitar Player" from the cemetery at St Bartholomew-the-Great in London's financial district
- 1979 American Fred Markham (22) sets a bicycle speed record of 81.8 kph (50.8 mph) over 200-meter course
- 1987 Miroslav Mihailovic begins 54 hours of telling jokes
First Pope to Enter a Mosque
2001 During a trip to Syria, Pope John Paul II becomes the first pope to visit a mosque
Rolling Stones Blimp
2002 The Rolling Stones fly a yellow blimp emblazoned with their logo at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, NYC, to announce an upcoming international tour
Friends Finale
2004 TV sitcom "Friends" airs the series finale of its 10th and final season in the US, attracting 52.5 million viewers
- 2020 Irish organization repays a 170 year old favor, raising over $2 million (to date) for US Navajo Nation and Hopi Reservation badly affected by COVID-19. In 1840s Choctaw Nation sent $170 to aid Irish potato famine.
